On February 9th, Safer Internet Day is celebrated worldwide. With the rise of e-commerce, many new buyers turned to virtual stores. How do we make them feel secure when shopping?
Buenos Aires, Argentina, February 9th, 2021 – The trend towards digitization in areas such as retail grows year by year and, as of 2020, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, they sped up. E-commerce was promoted and thousands of people made payments and conducted transactions through increasingly diversified channels. In this context, it’s more important than ever to have a secure website so that purchases are streamlined and users feel that way.
“When opening an online store, it’s important to have technology on your side, not only to lower the costs of operation and make the retailer’s task easier, but also so that transactions are carried out securely,” said Martín Malievac, the Research and Development Director for Napse, a leading retail technological solutions company. “Although e-commerce grew enormously in the last year and thousands of people were encouraged to buy online, we must take care of those customers. If they have good shopping experiences, they’ll come back.”
When it comes to making consumers and users feel safe, many technological, human, communicational and design factors come into play. Some tips to keep in mind:
- Be friendly with users
An easy-to-use website always builds more trust than one we won’t understand. Although many may not believe it, the aesthetics and speed of a virtual store play a key role when defining a purchase. For the user experience to be positive and culminate in a conversion, it is essential to provide them with the information they need and that they can browsing the site, viewing and selecting products, without “getting lost.”
- Customer Support
Responding to inquiries in a respectful, friendly, and custom manner is another fundamental step for our potential customers to feel safe when shopping. It’s also important to provide them with this information through the channel in which they seek it. It’s not enough to put a contact phone number on the website. It’s better to respond on the different social media, through WhatsApp, e-mail, inquiry forms, etc.
- Clear rules
The terms and conditions of the purchase must be registered on the web both visibly and clearly. Not many users know their rights when shopping online, so it doesn’t hurt to make them explicitly clear. For example, if they see that they can exchange the product or return it if it’s not what they expected, they’ll feel more secure.
- Shipping times and real-time tracking
In the e-commerce industry, consumers increasingly choose to have products shipped to their doorstep. When we offer this option, we must show them updated and realistic shipping times. If they know in real time where their package is and can “track” it, it’s much better. “At Napse, we always seek to optimize processes and enable omnichannel retailing in the sector. With Omni OMS, for example, we created a solution that facilitates and automates these processes, showing real-time updates on costs and shipping times, in addition to simplifying mechanisms for the exchange and return of products,” added Malievac.
- Offer multi-payment options (all of which are secure)
Payment methods to make a purchase have diversified quite a lot in recent years. We currently have credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets, bank transfers, cash deposits, and increasingly more methods. Each of our potential customers has a preferred tool, the one they choose and are comfortable with. Providing multiple options, including some more innovative such as payment links, allows us to create the best shopping experience for each of them.
In this sense, tools such as VTOL allow all transactions to be numbered in order to provide various payment alternatives and have a clear and orderly procedure that is updated in real time. “Our product is PCI-PADSS-internationally certified,” added Malievac, going on to say, “in this way, we guarantee compliance with the data security standards and protocols required worldwide.”
